All around the world, more and more companies are taking advantage of the teleconference services. They can now talk to their employees and stakeholders located in any part of the world in one room without going to them or inviting them to the premises. It saves them a lot of money and time. As a result, they are able to take critical business decisions in time and give their customers what they want. Teleconferencing services are on the rise as time passes. For this reason, you will see a lot of companies offering these services when you start looking for them on the internet.
With so many choices, it can be quite difficult to pick the best one. You can make this process easier if you have some pointers to identify the best conferencing service out of the bunch. Here are the five most critical points that you should consider to pick the best teleconference service for your business.
5 Factors to Consider to Pick the Best Teleconference Company
1. Ease of Use
The first thing you want in any teleconference services is the ease of use. You have to know that you will be dealing with a detailed software, a user interface, and some hardware in order to be able to make conference calls. There can be a lot of options for you manage in order to conduct a successful conference. It should be easy to operate these options because you want to focus on agenda of the conference rather than the software and its intricacies. From starting the conference call to managing the many options as a conference continues, everything has to be intuitive.
You have to know that your chances of making errors are higher with a software that is not user-friendly. On most of the teleconference services websites, you will see their screenshots and demonstrations. They will help you know whether the service is suitable for your needs or not.
2. Compatibility with Different Devices
Things have changed quite a bit in the past decade when you talk about communication technology. Just a few years ago, you only had the old mobile phones that were hardly considered suitable for using the internet. Then came the smartphones. Since the coming of the smartphones and their prevalence around the world, everything has to be compatible with them. Teleconferencing services are no exception to this trend. People do not like the idea of being fastened to their computers anymore. They like to do things on the go.
The best teleconferencing software and service will offer mobile and desktop compatibility. You don’t have to have everyone participating in the conference to be on their computers. In fact, a software that is designed with mobility and portability in mind, will have a smartphone application designed specifically for those who are mostly on their phones. With a smartphone application, joining a conference is only a click away. Furthermore, within a few clicks, you can create conferences as well.
3. Ease of Joining
The best teleconference services make it easy for your conference attendees to participate in the event. When these services had come our recently, they required everyone to had an ID and password to join the conference. Those requirements were set for the purpose of safety. However, some convenient ways were discovered later and they make joining the conference a breeze. The invited attendees have to dial a specific number and PIN from their devices to join the conference. Furthermore, in the same conference, there can be people who are on their computers, tablets, and smartphones.
4. Hardware Compatibility
This is something you have to consider because there are some companies that provide the software and the hardware for conference calling. These teleconference services work best when you use the hardware and the software from the same company. While that might seem like a great idea at first, this should not be the case. Instead, your company should have the autonomy to use your hardware and the software should work on it. If you pick a service that requires you to buy its hardware as well, you are looking at a huge upfront cost as well.
Not to mention, the complete overhaul of how your system works right now might not be very productive too. If your employees want to use their smartphones to join into the conference, they should be able to. If you have to force people to use certain devices to only join a conference, it is best that you stay away from such a solution.
5. Feature Richness
You should look for a feature-rich solution because there are many requirements that you might realize later after you have already picked the software. Some of the features you should be looking for include video sharing, real-time presentation, file sharing, etc. You must not forget that the first purpose of using teleconference services is to collaborate without having to call anyone to the same room. When people are the in the same room, you can see their expressions, explain ideas to them on a white board, and do much more.
You should still be able to use these options when you are meeting on a conference call. The best teleconference services do provide all of these options. They let you share files, share real-time presentations, and even transfer the hosting responsibilities to the authorized participants. When sharing files, you should also see whether or not you can view the files within your teleconference software.
Final Thoughts
When you go online for shopping the best teleconference services, you will find many today. Almost all of them claim to be the best one way or another. However, the pointers mentioned above will help you identify the best one. An important thing that you should not ignore is the option of using the trial version or getting a demo. If there is a demo version of the software available, make sure you use this option to get a hang of the service. Usually, you will have from one week to one month to see how good or bad the software for teleconference is.
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